Auguries
by Meepinstein
Summary: Oneshot, contains OC. Fate is a heavy burden.


Written for fun, contains an easter egg. Some implied dark jazz and silly puns or play on words or whatever.

**I own nothing you recognize.**

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She was thin, petite. Small hands, small feet, always wearing dresses with frills and bows. A blue eyed blonde with little lips, a natural flush, and long dark lashes. She would probably look fit on a shelf among porcelain dolls.

Except she had no time to sit and look pretty. She was always working, hands nimble, spinning. There were easier ways to go about it – the one time he'd seen things he shouldn't have, the white threads were in neat little coils and each wooden spool turned endlessly as life ticked on. The end generated itself in little gold sparks. Each thread was woven to a minimum of 150 years. Some had already been measured and cut and continued to wind themselves up within their little plastic cases. When the thread had all wound up, the little spontaneous light illuminating it would wink out and it would soon be removed.

If anyone knew how to be evil, it was her. Certainly after a point the burden of guilt would weigh her down and she'd lie pathetically on the spinning room floor among the sheep and reels and press her cheek to the stone floor and stare at a wall. Sometimes he visited, in what could be considered the flesh, for she never slept. He'd watch the threads, particularly his own, winding itself from the black coil at the bottom of the case, coming to see if her sisters had measured and cut it.

They never did. You could never kill fear.

His thread was the longest, even surpassing hers, as the previous Fate had cut her own thread. He didn't know what it contained, just that she had woven it. She'd spun all his technically forbidden visits, the times she'd tugged feebly at the bottom of his robes and prattled on about war and genocide and famine and how she done those things, that yes, he made them dream it, but she'd made it happen for real, and she'd made him make them dream it...

But he knew it wouldn't last long. She'd be back to spinning tragedy, because not everything was joy and rainbows. Even her thread has started with cruelty.

"_Who was I before this?"_ She'd started babbling at him once, laying on the stones, grabbing at his hem even though it broke away in her hand. He hadn't particularly cared, but had chosen to humor her anyway, sitting on her stool at the spinning wheel. _"Do you know the story of Rumpelstiltskin?"_

"_That's just a story."_

She grabbed his collar and pulled his face to hers _"You're just a story," _she'd growled, before collapsing in his lap. He had to resist shoving her away. She might try to end him if he did.

"_So you married a king and a tiny man tried to eat your baby?"_

"_No...what's wrong with you? That's not right at all. Who told you that?"_

_He ran his fingers through her blonde hair, admiring the contrast. "Then what happened?"_

"_So...he made the straw into gold...on the third day...I had nothing left to give. Except one thing. A special thing."_

"_That special thing?"_

_She nodded slowly. "So we entered into...one of those agreements...after I'd given the special thing..."_

_He remembered the nightmares she'd had. The cruelest part of his center had delighted in participating in them. "And...?"_

"_Well...I got pregnant. And died in childbirth." Her voice had been flat through the speech. "And then I became this." She looked up at him. "Fate...is a cruel mistress, isn't she?"_

_He realized she was asking about herself, not the one previous."Well, dearie...not everything is sunshine and happiness. There are days when the sun doesn't rise at all. Cruelty is the natural order of things." He'd continued to stoke her hair as he spoke._

"_Yes...I suppose." She returned to laying her head in his lap and looking at the wall. "He's doing legal work now. Contracts."_

"_Nothing is crueler than legal contracts. Lawyers are positively the worst kind of people."_

"_Oh?" Several moments ticked by and he still hadn't taken his leave. "Is there something you wanted?"_

"_Well... fate is my cruel _mistress._"_

"_That's not how it works..." Something had seeped into her voice. He'd used that dangerous lilt far too many times to just over look it._

"_How does it work?"_

"_Tempting the hand of fate...must be done on her terms." They were face to face now. "Do you understand?"_

"_Of course...mistress."_


End file.
